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Untangling the hellbroth of my mind

depression

oh hi there, I’m j.

I am a college student living an outwardly pretty normal college studenty life, except I’ve got all this pharmaceutical deadweight I’m carrying around. Oh, and I’m also a woman, in case that’s a thing you wonder about when perusing blogs. Allow me to explain what I mean by pharmaceutical deadweight:

I made this blog on kind of an impulse move following my first sleepless night due to decreasing the dosage of my antipsychotic, geodon. Just for the record, I’m nowhere near psychotic, just unnecessarily medicated. I am diagnosed bipolar, but I know in my heart it’s not right. I am probably borderline, which responds better to therapy than meds. I’m not yet sure what I’m trying to accomplish with this blog. Support? I guess that’s what this is. I mean, I had a xanga way back in the day and I used it to blog about my feelings anonymously to strangers and it really kind of helped, so I’m kind of trying to do that again with this. There are very few people in my life who I can talk to about this, and even fewer that support my decision to pursue a med-free lifestyle. I want a place free of judgment where I can talk about whatever’s on my mind without hearing anyone say “just take your meds.” I’ve been dulled into oblivion at the hands of incompetent, pill-happy doctors for too long. I’ve had my brain fried (electroconvulsive therapy, aka electroshock) eight times simply because nobody could figure out what to do to help me. I was hurting for a variety of legitimate reasons and, instead of actually taking the time to help me, the doctors sprang for the “quick fixes.” I’m only 24 and I feel like I’ve lived ten lifetimes dealing with the whirlwind of all this crap, going in and out of hospitals, getting on and off a billion different drugs, blah blah blah. I’m finally learning that drugs are not the answer, and that I’ve just been turning my brain into mush for eight years now with no true improvement, just band-aid fixes. Don’t get me wrong—psychotropic medication has done a lot of good for a lot of people, I don’t discount that. If it works for you, awesome–it doesn’t work for me. It has helped me in some ways, but it has hurt me more than it has helped. I also don’t mean to imply that all doctors are quacks–I’ve just had some really rotten luck. Getting healthy, for me, is all about hard work—making better choices, adjusting my mindset, willing myself to do things I don’t immediately want to, and putting effort into therapy. As a therapeutic tool, I need a place to brain vomit about all this other than in a medical professional’s office—so here I am. I’m also going to kind of use this as a blog as motivation to rid myself of other toxic things in my life as well such as nicotine, marijuana (well, at least get less dependent on it), and general treating-my-body-like-shit-ness. You know, working on things like eating right, being active, bloodeeblooblah. I also have an extensive eating disorder history, so I’d like to find as well as give support for that, too.

Anyhow, here’s the lowdown:

current meds: geodon 40 mg. at night (well, 20 mg as of last night), vyvanse 50 mg in the morning, and xanax XR 1 mg as needed. I am trying to get off geodon and vyvanse; I don’t mind having the xanax around for the occasional bout of anxiety. My psychiatrist is helping wean me off of the vyvanse at my request, but the geodon I am doing on my own volition.

As you can see, I’m not actually on all that many medications right now. I’ve successfully weaned myself off of a HELL of a lot, y’all have just caught me mid-process. I’ve been on this particular combination for quite some time now (except the vyvanse was lowered from 60 mg around mid-June), and getting off this combo will be the hardest part of all that I’ve done so far. The xanax is really no biggie, I generally rarely take it. I noticed myself taking it more lately (almost every day this week), so I didn’t take one last night—this may have been part of why I didn’t sleep, along with lowering the geodon by 20 mg., but it’s all the more reason I need to stop so I don’t get dependent. The geodon is apparently a BITCH to come off of. Everything I’ve read online says to expect horrible withdrawals, and I’m kind of already experiencing them just by going down 20 mg for one night. I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, and I feel super wired, headachey, and all around totally terrible today, and it’s probably only going to get worse. It’s compounded by the fact that I also have mono right now, which makes me feel supershitty in the first place. But anyway, I’m powering through the withdrawals in the hopes that, on the other end of this, I will be in a better place. I just hope this doesn’t turn into many nights in a row with no sleep. Welp, I think this has already gotten quite a bit longer than I intended. I tend to get rambly and spacey when I am super sleep deprived.

So yeah, it’d be great to connect with some people on here who might be dealing with psychiatric things of one sort or another for mutual support purposes. If you’re in need of some support, don’t hesitate to shoot me a message. Or even if you’re not, say hi anyway! I love “meeting” new people and hearing their stories. Okay, okay, I’ll go now.

j.

tl;dr: well damn, I really wouldn’t blame you. I’m trying to get off my psych meds and it’s pretty rough terrain and it would be cool to have support and things.